Runaway
by Squirrel holding a bazooka
Summary: Jazz has forced Danny to start writing in a journal, but he didn't exactly expect anyone to find it. In addition, there's a little girl running around Amity Park that appears to be... his clone? Better yet, she's got ghost powers and has no qualms with using them to fight ghosts. So much for that secret identity thing.


I don't own Danny Phantom. This takes place after Double Cross My Heart (the one with Gregor in it).

* * *

October 1st, 2005

Living with a sister is hardly what I call an easy task. Especially when she is consistently getting into my business- my ghost business in particular. Jazz is starting to understand the meaning of the word 'boundaries', but it is still a fairly new concept to her. Training will take a while.

That is it in the way of siblings. I live in a nice, nuclear family- that is the correct word, right? Nuclear? Either way, nuclear doesn't always mean normal. My parents are professional ghost hunters, always going out to protect the town. But if it wasn't for their wacky profession, I never would have gotten one of the greatest gifts and most horrible curses of my life: ghost powers.

It started around the beginning of eighth grade. My parents decided to build a portal to the ghost realm after their attempt to do the same in college failed. They spent nearly a year on it, or maybe eight months. Meh. When it didn't work, they had to go back to square one, and it was another four months, one month into ninth grade, that I was brave- stupid?- enough to show it to my friends.

While one of my friends, Tucker, was pretty interested in the technology of it, it was Sam, my other friend, who convinced me to check out the inside. I probably should have listened to my parents' repeated precautions instead of her, but I went inside. I tripped over some wires, my hand hit a button, and just like that, I, Danny Fenton, became Danny Phantom, Amity Park's own personal superhero.

Now, that's not saying that you should just go up inside major electrical objects and pressing buttons, but it sure worked for me.

It was only later that I met someone else like me, Vlad Plasmius. I'm not about to put his human half's name here, because he told me that if his secret ever got out, mine would, too. Then again, I already put both my human and ghost halves' names on here, so…

VLAD MASTERS IS VLAD PLASMIUS. HE WILL TRY TO KILL YOU. IF YOU EVER SEE HIM, RUN AWAY.

There we go.

Now, as I said, he will try to kill you. He also tried to get me to join him, but only if I would help him kill my father. Yeah. Like I would ever do that.

But sometimes, it would be nice to have another halfa I could talk to, one that could really relate t

* * *

_Ding dong! Dingdong, dingdong, ding-_

I was down the stairs and at the door in seconds thanks to my ghost powers. They really came in handy sometimes for menial things. I opened the door, revealing a dark-haired girl in scraps of clothes in shades of red and blue, covered in blood. She looked at me with desperate, pleading, sky-colored eyes.

"Help me," she begged, and with that, she passed out. I caught her with no difficulty, picking her up bridal-style. I wasn't entirely sure of what had just happened, or who she was, but my hero complex, as Sam called it, told me to take her in. And oddly enough, she looked quite like me- same hair color, same eye color, same bone structure…

But that was hardly important. I laid the girl down on the sofa and walked into the kitchen to retrieve a wet washcloth and a glass of water. I simply rang out the washcloth as I walked back to the living room, ignoring the droplets of water that rained down onto the carpet. My mom would kill me later, but at the moment, the girl was more important. As a got back to her, I laid the washcloth across her forehead and sat down on the coffee table. The water glass was placed beside me for when the girl woke up.

"Hmm?"

I turned my full attention to the girl upon hearing that noise. She seemed to be waking up, her eyes struggling to flitter open. "Hey, there," I said kindly, hoping to pull the girl back to consciousness. I help her pull herself up so she could sit before I handed her the glass of water. "How are you feeling?" I asked her.

She looked to me, her desperate eyes now betraying another emotion: horror. "Like I've been beaten to a bloody pulp," she told me dully, like this was an everyday occurrence.

"WHAT?"

Both the girl and I turned our heads to the front door, where my mom now stood, a paper sack of groceries in one of her arms. She had obviously heard the last thing the girl said. "Daniel James Fenton, what on Earth is going on here? Who is this girl? Who did this to her?"

The girl blinked at my mom, a look of… recognition? in her eyes. She obviously had no idea what to say. "Mom, this girl just showed up on our porch about ten minutes before you got home. I don't know what happened."

"It… I…" The girl hesitated, wondering what exactly she should say. She appeared confused from what I could tell, almost like she didn't know how she had gotten here. "The last thing I remember is… is Plasmius. Saying he was going to kill me because I… I wouldn't…" Her eyes grew hazy, and she leaned on me, as though searching through that much of her memory required massive amounts of energy. "My name is Danielle."

While I could hear the final declaration just fine due to my proximity, my mom had to strain her ears. Still, she obviously heard the girl. "Don't worry, Danielle. We've fought Plasmius before; we won't let him hurt you." She set the bag of groceries down on the ground and approached the two of us, brushing the girl's messy bangs away from her face, only to reveal a bloody gash. I could only imagine what Plasmius had done to her.

"Danielle," I whispered, "what did Vl- Plasmius want you to do?"

The girl blinked in rapid succession, as though that would clear her mind. "He wanted me… he wanted me to trick Danny… Fenton. So Vlad could kill him." Her voice was so soft, yet her words so deadly.

My mother and I looked up at each other quickly, neither of us noticing that Danielle had passed out again, her glass of water falling to the floor. Not wasting a moment, I picked Danielle up, my mother and I heading down to the basement/lab.

I laid Danielle down on the examination table, a recent addition to the room. My mother wasted no time in hooking her up to ever machine, device, and scanner in the place. "This-this isn't gonna hurt her, is it?" I asked, feeling protective of the girl's health. After all, if she admitted what Vlad wanted her to do, she couldn't actually plan to carry it out, right?

"No, no, it's all just examinations," my mom promised. "A little blood taken is all that it will-" My mom got distracted by something as she looked at Danielle's arm for a vein. I followed her gaze to see Danielle's blood littered with specks of green.

"Whoa," I blurted out in a whisper. He blood looked much like mine in my human form. "You got any tests for that?"

"Danny, go to your room," my mom said in her 'no nonsense' voice. "I don't want you near this if something goes wrong."

* * *

Three hours later, I was unable to resist the urge to check on the girl, whoever- or whatever- she was. I ran into the basement without request, only to see that my dad was now in the room as well, discussing something with my mom. By the way they silenced themselves when I entered, it wasn't that hard to guess that they were talking about me.

"What is it?" I asked. "What's wrong?"

"Danny…" my mom began quietly. "This girl… she's… she's…"

"Your daughter," my dad cut in, always good at being blunt. "Plasmius must have gotten some of your DNA and made a clone of some sort, but he added in some ghost's DNA. This girl is half human, half ghost."

The color drained from my face. "Y-you're kidding me, right?" I asked, eyes going wide.

"Genetically, she is the same age as you, but she was likely created just a few months ago," my mom explained. "She also has the potential to be an extremely powerful ghost, so we should probably find out what ghost the other half of her DNA comes from and defeat it before it threatens the town."

It wasn't exactly difficult for me to deduce that this 'ghost' that the other half of her DNA came from was me. "Yeah," I agreed hesitantly. "You should do that… but what should we do about Danielle?" I couldn't help myself from going on the defensive. "I mean, she's half human, so she can be good, right?"

My mom nodded. "It's possible, though she'd have to be raised properly; I'm afraid that Plasmius might have already done a good deal of damage."

"For the record, I can hear every word you're saying."

The three of us turned our attention to the examination table, where Danielle had lifted her head.

"How long have you been awake?" I asked, immediately rushing up to her. Evidently, my paternal instinct was rather strong. I brushed the girl's bangs out of her face, noting that the blood had been cleaned off her skin, and the gash on her head was now closed by a few butterfly bandages.

"Since, 'this girl is half human, half ghost,'" she told me. Her sad eyes met mine, and I just couldn't help but pull her into a hug.

"Don't worry, Danielle," I promised, "I'm not going to let Plasmius hurt you. You can live a normal life if you want to, or you can-"

"I want to stop him," Danielle interrupted. "He wanted me to kill people… I'm sorry, what's your name?"

I let out a tiny sigh. "I'm Danny Fenton," I confessed to her. "And these are my parents, Jack and Maddie."

Now it was Danielle's turn to have the color drain from her face. "I… I… I am _so_ sorry," she apologized with tears threatening to spill from her eyes.

"Hey, there, it's alright," I said, wiping the tears from her eyes. "You did the right thing. And that's all that matters."

Evidently, I had said the right thing, because Danielle was calm and obedient when it came to chores or necessary tests to check her powers and stability.

"It appears that you should have some sort of ghost half," my dad declared, staring at a screen with a bunch of squiggly lines running across it. I had no clue what they meant, but then again, it wasn't exactly my job to interpret them. "Some form where your ghost energy is much more concentrated."

Danielle blinked. "You mean like when I go ghost?" she asked, using a form of my catch phrase.

"Uh… yeah, sure," my dad replied, a bit confused by the girl's reply. "Could you show us exactly what you mean?"

Danielle nodded rapidly, and those ever-so-familiar white rings formed around Danielle's waist. One went up, one went down, and just like that, I was looking at Danielle Phantom- the little DP symbol and all. Her eyebrows furrowed as she watched the shocked reactions of my parents. "What's wrong?" she asked.

"We know who your ghostly half is from," I declared, being the only one brave enough to say it.

* * *

Hello, there, everyone! I am hard at work on all of my stories, but this idea just popped into my head and wouldn't leave me alone. It's basically an AU from Kindred Spirits, where Dani runs away from Vlad instead of helping him kidnap Danny. I'm looking forward to this and seeing what you all think.


End file.
